Rubber bracelets, there’s one for every cause - diseases, sobriety, religious groups… All sorts of concepts and mottoes are stamped on every colour conceivable and worn to proclaim support.
The hundreds of blue bracelets sat on my desk most of the day, awaiting pick-up and distribution. Normally that would annoy me. I hate it when people just dump stuff that has nothing to do with me on my desk and ask me to deal with it. My tiny office is already cluttered with an insane amount of other people’s stuff,
from the school’s lost and found
to the deliveries that should by all rights be dealt with by the mailroom
to permission slips for field trips that the student activities office has decided are now my job to distribute and collect
to the custodian’s extra broom and dustbin.
(Why she can’t just put it in the maintenance closet just three doors down, I don’t know, but I’m not about to be “rude” enough to suggest it.)
The distribution of the Good Neighbors Club bracelets has nothing to do with either Discipline or Attendance and so it really shouldn’t be added to my various and ridiculous array of tacked on tasks.
It’s not that I don’t want to be helpful, really, but I am absolutely swamped, overwhelmed with tasks and debris in my office. It makes me a (good) bit crankier with every little extra thing.
So really, the bright blue bracelets should have rubbed me wrong by their very existence in my little plot of office real estate.
I will admit, however, that I actually hated to see them go. I had a genuine stab of regret as the last one left my desk. I’d been enjoying using them all day.
I am proud to admit that I have, due to natural ability and much honing of the art, extremely wicked aim when using the rubber bracelets as stretch and shoot projectiles. I can hit a moving target, say a scrambling freshman at fifteen paces, with uncanny accuracy.
“Thwap!” - Sound of bracelet out of nowhere striking unsuspecting boy with some considerable force. “Yow!” - Sound of hapless boy being struck. “Yes!” - Sound of harried secretary celebrating her not so inner evil inappropriately while avoiding her inevitable nervous breakdown for at least one more day.
And too, there was the lovely air of irony that accompanied using the bracelets as weapons, seeing as “Team Up Against Violence” was stamped on one and all.
I’ve never been much of a team player.
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